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Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

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Re: Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

#31

Post by version_five »

psychlops wrote: post #13

A few days ago we were criticizing Nintendo because it was making too much money per employee and didn't hire enough. Also, we criticize Google for laying people off and Amazon for everything else (overhiring?). One wonders why Apple gets high praise for "hiring cautiously".

It's not immediately obvious which has the greatest net benefit, if one can even think in those terms. Is it worse to make hay when the sun shines and then cut back later? Didn't the good period provide a productive exchange of money for work, that would have been absent in a company that just sat on the sidelines?

Re: Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

#32

Post by mabbo »

Apple's underlying economics haven't changed, so they have not had any reason to over-hire in the first place.

Amazon, Google, Meta, Shopify and others are all e-commerce based. There was a clear trend that e-commerce had shifted up due to the pandemic, and looked to be permanent. That bet was wrong, so they all had layoffs.

Other companies were willing to hire lots of developers because the ROI on devs was good compared to low inflation and low interest rates. Then both of those things changed, so the ROI on a dev compared to investing in other things became much worse- so there's less money for developers.

Meanwhile, Apple has a mostly-stable massive chunk of the consumer device market and has always had a profit margin that is startlingly high. Not much has changed as far as they're concerned.

Re: Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

#33

Post by wand3r »

> Apple, meanwhile, was more cautious. Its headcount increased just 20% from 2020 to 2022

At Apples size this is still pretty huge. At least, I thought it was until I saw that Amazon, Meta and Salesforce basically DOUBLED in 2 years.

If this data is correct isnt that insane? How can you effectively double orgs of this size over a 2 year period? Its not like a startup with 50 people or something. I guess I was out of the loop on just how big the hiring was over the pandemic. Not that layoffs are good for employees and workers like me, but these companies must still have retained tons of the hires as RIFs in tech seem to be about 7-20%.

Re: Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

#34

Post by Someone »

bryan_w wrote: post #7

And they failed to hire enough people to bring their AR headset to market which is the other side of the coin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks's_law:

“Brooks' law is an observation about software project management according to which adding manpower to a software project that is behind schedule delays it even longer.”

I also think they’re doing research, not development most of the time. Such projects can’t be time-estimated, so they can’t be late (managers or outsiders still might call them late, though), and often can’t be parallelized well (“9 women cannot make a baby in one month”), so starting out with a larger team may not have helped, either.

Re: Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

#35

Post by ep103 »

ceejayoz wrote: post #16
psychlops wrote: post #13

A few days ago we were criticizing Nintendo because it was making too much money per employee and didn't hire enough. Also, we criticize Google for laying people off and Amazon for everything else (overhiring?). One wonders why Apple gets high praise for "hiring cautiously".

I like Nintendo's approach, and I like Apple's approach as well. I think it shows a lot more respect for employees than "hire as much as possible, then cut deep ASAP if fortunes change"; big firing rounds can be devastating to both the folks who go and the folks who stay.

I've generally found that if you can't measure something well, large American companies act extremely poorly with regards to that thing.

Its well understood that layoffs destroy the morale of your employees, and that they drive out a huge percentage of employees, and specifically the ones who have the best alternative options.

But I imagine that measuring the impact of brain drain from a layoff after a subsequent overhire compared to potential growth losses from not overhiring during the boom is one of those things that is extremely hard to measure.

Good on Apple and Nintendo for having strong enough and competent enough leadership to make that call, instead of the typical metric based CYA.

Re: Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

#36

Post by Clubber »

jungledeuce wrote: post #25

You mean to tell me that Apple could have created thousands of high paying jobs, if only for several years, but didn’t. And this is good? I can never remember who to be mad at. More seriously, I realize this is just clickbait, but I wonder how you could determine objectively which approach (hiring slow and needing to catch up, hiring medium, hiring fast and needing to fire) is “better for business”. Seems very hard t…

>I can never remember who to be mad at.

It's so exhausting too.

Re: Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

#37

Post by shmatt »

lapcat wrote: post #26
throw_m239339 wrote: post #6

> There’s a reason why Apple Inc. is under less pressure than tech peers to slash jobs during the current slowdown: It hired more efficiently in the first place. So there is no official statement from Apple saying that they are not planning a layoff round in the coming months, just the opinion of 2 analysts? Apple isn't avoiding anything.

There was an official statement directly from Tim Cook a week ago: https://9to5mac.com/2023/02/02/apple-layoffs-tim-cook/

He literally says "you can never say never"

Every CEO says its a last resort, they tried everything, etc. Cooks statement isn't any different

Re: Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

#38

Post by asdajksah2123 »

picardo wrote: post #5
ryanjshaw wrote: post #3

Why is Apple being compared to Google and Amazon in this context?

Lazy journalism. They're all tech companies and all tech companies have the same business model, of course.

Why is it lazy when journalists compare Apple and Google, and yet it's rare to go even a few comments before FAANG being dropped into any tech discussion?

Re: Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

#39

Post by mclouts91 »

tablespoon wrote: post #19

Or maybe the current tech layoffs are a fad not driven by necessity, and Apple tends to set trends, not mindlessly follow them?

Most layoffs are happening in growth businesses that aren’t even profitable on paper. Apple, make things, things people want and quite often need. they are a solid business that are unlikely to suffer much in a short term tightening of people’s finances interest rate rises.

Re: Apple avoids job cuts because it didn’t overhire like Google and Amazon

#40

Post by shmatt »

All of these "company X has avoided layoffs" articles are pretty foolish, are all the big layoffs done? Are we even sure there won't be second rounds by summer?

Apple could layoff 4% in a week and these same analysts will try to explain why there was no other way

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